Posted by Revise History?-WW on March 22, 1999 at 15:44:29 {MWOuU2yvobPRY}:
In Reply to: *******Realization posted by 5GJW on March 21, 1999 at 21:26:47:
>The Russian industrial machine. In 1941, our lend-lease was going to England, what there was of it.
C'mon sonny, you ever study history or watch the discovery Channel/PBS? They can be very enlightening. The Russians were MOVING their industrial base behind the Ural Mountains. We were supplying them with t-38, p-40 fighters, some twin engine bombers, tanks, trucks, grain etc. It was in late '43 and 44 that they started to roll out large amounts of their own replacements.
Restated, Ike cut off Patton's gas when he realized that the Third Army could end up rolling into Berlin before the Russians. Had Ike let Patton go, historians speculate that he would have surrounded and cut off Berlin and made for the German eastern border. Ike also feared that Patton would engage the Russians if given half a chance...
>We only shortened the war.
Only!? This speaks volumes.
>We faced only 40% of the German army, the Russians had the rest.
Whoa, where does this figure come from? I will accede that they did face more NUMBERS than we did, but what about crack SS and Panzer units?
This is all very relevant to the claim that we "stopped Hitler". The facts show that
without a western front, Russian advances would have petered out and resulted in their eventual defeat.
They threw everything they had at the Germans because they knew they had replacements. When the Germans tried this at Bologne
against us, they 'shot their wad' because they had little left to back up their temporary advance.
You also forget the effect that our costly daytime bombing had on the German production of armaments and the attrition it caused to the Luftwafe. Their veteran pilots flew hundreds of missions until they were decimated, near the end they were putting up pilots who had less than 100 hours of flying or glider time!
The facts are that without the USA, the Germans would have
defeated Europe, Russia and Great Britain, occupied North Africa and the Middle East!
Now, I qualify this statement with the recognition that the Allies victory was a combined effort
in that every nation in the pact contributed to
it.
WW